What if an older and wiser person told you he knew the crucial, essential activities to focus your family’s time and energies on? Would you listen to him? Would the idea take root of less but better?

My last post focused on three letters by confused parents, that wished they knew how to manage their children’s bad behavior. President Gordon B. Hinckley gave an address in 1994 to the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Brigham Young University Management Society called, “Four Simple Things to Help Our Families and Our Nations”.

President Hinckly gives discouraging statistics about the war on the family and then says:

“What, you may ask, can be done? The observance of four simple things on the part of parents would in a generation or two turn our societies around in terms of their moral values.’

“They are simply these: Let parents and children

(1) teach and learn goodness together, 

(2) work together, 

(3) read good books together, and 

(4) pray together.”

I love the straightforwardness of President Hinckley’s appeal to us. Is it too simplistic in our complicated world of technology, club sports and overworked parents? When Sonja Carson focused on just one of these elements, it eventually lifted her family out of poverty.

Together. All of us focusing on learning goodness, working, reading and praying together. Simple but powerful.